The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb
Chapter 107 : Dec. 21. St. Thomas.Also the birthdays of the King and Queen, and the Prince and Princ

Dec. 21. St. Thomas.

Also the birthdays of the King and Queen, and the Prince and Princess of Wales: and the King's accession, proclamation, and coronation.

In addition to the generous allowance of holidays above given the boys had every alternate Wednesday for a whole day; eleven days at Easter, four weeks in the summer, and fifteen days at Christmas. In 1837 the holiday system was remodelled. Compare Lamb's other remarks on his whole-day rambles in "Recollections of Christ's Hospital" (Vol. I.) and in the essays in the present volume ent.i.tled "Amicus Redivivus"

and "Newspapers."

Page 16, line 14. _The Tower_. Blue-coat boys still have this right of free entrance to the Tower; but the lions are no more. They were transferred to the Zoological Gardens in 1831.

Page 16, line 16. _L.'s governor_. Meaning Samuel Salt, M.P.; but it was actually his friend Mr. Timothy Yeats who signed Lamb's paper.

More accurately, Lamb's father lived under Salt's roof.

Page 16, line 7 from foot. _H----_. According to Lamb's Key this was Hodges; but in the British Museum copy of _Elia_, first edition, some one has written Huggins. It is immaterial. Nevis and St. Kitt's (St.

Christopher's) are islands in the British West Indies. Tobin would be James Webbe Tobin, of Nevis, who died in 1814, the brother of the playwright John Tobin, author of "The Honeymoon."

Page 17, line 2. _A young a.s.s_. The general opinion at Christ's Hospital is that Lamb invented this incident; and yet it has the air of being true.

Page 17, line 18. _L.'s admired Perry_. John Perry, steward from 1761 to 1785, mentioned in Lamb's earlier essay.

Page 17, foot. _Gags_. Still current slang.

Page 17, foot. ----. No name in the Key. The quotation is an adaptation of:--

It is reported thou didst eat strange flesh Which some did die to look on.

"Antony and Cleopatra," Act I., Scene 4, lines 67-68.

It is perhaps worth remarking that in _David Copperfield_ d.i.c.kens has a school incident of a similar character.

Page 18, line 14 from foot. _Mr. Hathaway_. Matthias Hathaway, steward from 1790 to 1813.

Page 19, line 8. _I was a hypochondriac lad_. Here Lamb drops the Coleridge mask and speaks as himself.

Page 20, line 15. _Bamber Gascoigne, and Peter Aubert_. Bamber Gascoigne, M.P. (1725-1791), of Bifrons, in Ess.e.x. Of Peter Aubert I can find nothing, except that the a.s.sistant secretary of the East India Company at the time Lamb wrote this essay was Peter Auber, afterwards full secretary. His name here may be a joke.

Page 20, line 6 from foot. _Matthew Field_. The Rev. Matthew Feilde, also vicar of Ugley and curate of Berden. For the Rev. James Boyer see below.

Page 21, line 18. _"Peter Wilkins," etc. The Adventures of Peter Wilkins_, by Robert Paltock, 1751, is still read; but _The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Robert Boyle_, 1736, has had its day. It was a blend of unconvincing travel and some rather free narrative: a piece of sheer hackwork to meet a certain market. See Lamb's sonnet to Stothard, Vol. IV. _The Fortunate Blue-Coat Boy_ I have not seen.

Canon Ainger describes it as a rather foolish romance, showing how a Blue-coat boy marries a rich lady of rank. The sub-t.i.tle is "Memoirs of the Life and Happy Adventures of Mr. Benjamin Templeman; formerly a Scholar in Christ's Hospital. By an Orphanotropian," 1770.

Page 22, footnote. I have not discovered a copy of Matthew Feilde's play.

Page 23, line 17 from foot. _Squinting W----_. Not identifiable.

Page 23, line 7 from foot. _Coleridge, in his literary life_.

Coleridge speaks in the _Biographia Literaria_ of having had the "inestimable advantage of a very sensible, though at the same time a very severe master, the Reverend James Bowyer [Boyer]," and goes on to attribute to that master's discrimination and thoroughness much of his own cla.s.sical knowledge and early interest in poetry and criticism.

Coleridge gives this example of Boyer's impatient humour:--

In our own English compositions (at least for the last three years of our school education), he showed no mercy to phrase, metaphor, or image, unsupported by a sound sense, or where the same sense might have been conveyed with equal force and dignity in plainer words. _Lute, harp_ and _lyre, Muse, Muses_ and _inspirations, Pegasus, Parna.s.sus_ and _Hippocrene_, were all an abomination to him. In fancy I can almost hear him now exclaiming, "Harp? Harp?

Lyre? Pen and ink, boy, you mean! Muse, boy, muse? Your nurse's daughter, you mean! Pierian spring? Oh, aye! the cloister pump, I suppose!"

Touching Boyer's cruelty, Coleridge adds that his "severities, even now, not seldom furnish the dreams by which the blind fancy would fain interpret to the mind the painful sensations of distempered sleep."

In _Table Talk_ Coleridge tells another story of Boyer. "The discipline at Christ's Hospital in my time," he says, "was ultra-Spartan; all domestic ties were to be put aside. 'Boy!' I remember Bowyer saying to me once when I was crying the first day of my return after the holidays, 'Boy! the school is your father! Boy!

the school is your mother! Boy! the school is your brother! the school is your sister! the school is your first cousin, and your second cousin, and all the rest of your relations! Let's have no more crying!'"

Leigh Hunt in his autobiography also has reminiscences of Boyer and Feilde.

James Boyer or Bowyer was born in 1736, was admitted to the school in 1744, and pa.s.sed to Balliol. He resigned his Upper Grammar Masters.h.i.+p in 1799, and probably retired to the rectory of Gainscolne to which he had been appointed by the school committee six years earlier. They also gave him 500 and a staff.

Page 23, line 6 from foot. _Author of the Country Spectator_. Thomas Fanshaw Middleton (1769-1822), afterwards Bishop of Calcutta, who was at school with Lamb and Coleridge. In the little statuette group which is called the Coleridge Memorial, subscribed for in 1872, on the centenary of Coleridge's birth, and held in rotation by the ward in which most prizes have been gained in the year, Middleton is the tallest figure. It is reproduced in my large edition. The story which it celebrates is to the effect that Middleton found Coleridge reading Virgil in the playground and asked him if he were learning a lesson.

Coleridge replied that he was "reading for pleasure," an answer which Middleton reported to Boyer, and which led to Boyer taking special notice of him. The _Country Spectator_ was a magazine conducted by Middleton in 1792-1793.

Page 23, line 3 from foot. _C----_. Coleridge again.

Page 24, line 4. _Lancelot Pepys Stevens_. Rightly spelled Stephens, afterwards Under Grammar Master at the school.

Page 24, line 6. _Dr. T----e_. Arthur William Trollope (1768-1827), who succeeded Boyer as Upper Grammar Master. He resigned in 1826.

Page 24, line 21. _Th----_. Sir Edward Thornton (1766-1852), diplomatist, who was sent as Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to Lower Saxony, to Sweden, to Denmark and other courts, afterwards becoming minister to Portugal.

Page 24, line 23. _Middleton_. See note above. The treatise was _The Doctrine of the Greek Article as applied to the Criticism and the Ill.u.s.tration of the New Testament_, 1808. It was directed chiefly against Granville Sharpe. Middleton was the first Bishop of Calcutta.

Page 24, line 8 from foot. _Richards_. This was George Richards (1767-1837). His poem on "Aboriginal Britons," which won a prize given in 1791 by Earl Harcourt, is mentioned favourably in Byron's _English Bards and Scotch Reviewers_. Richards became vicar of St.

Martin's-in-the-Fields and a Governor of Christ's Hospital. He founded a gold medal for Latin hexameters.

Page 24, foot. _S---- ... M----_. According to the Key "Scott, died in Bedlam," and "Maunde, dismiss'd school."

Page 24, foot. "_Finding some of Edward's race._" From Prior's Carmen Seculare for 1700:--

Finding some of Stuart's race Unhappy, pa.s.s their annals by.

Lamb alters Stuart to Edward because Edward VI. founded Christ's Hospital.

Page 25, line 12. _C.V. Le G----_. Charles Valentine Le Grice (1773-1858), whom we meet also in the essay on "Grace Before Meat."

Le Grice, in his description of Lamb as a schoolboy in Talfourd's _Memorials_, remarked: "I never heard his name mentioned without the addition of Charles, although, as there was no other boy of the name of Lamb, the addition was unnecessary; but there was an implied kindness in it, and it was a proof that his gentle manners excited that kindness."

Page 25, line 20. _Allen_. Robert Allen, whom we meet again in the essay on "Newspapers." After a varied and not fortunate career he died of apoplexy in 1805.

Page 25, line 8 from foot. _The junior Le G----_. Samuel Le Grice became a soldier and died in the West Indies. Lamb wrote of him to Coleridge in 1796, after the tragedy at his home, at a time when friends were badly needed, "Sam Le Grice who was then in town was with me the first 3 or 4 days, and was as a brother to me, gave up every hour of his time to the very hurting of his health and spirits, in constant attendance and humouring my poor father."

Page 25, line 8 from foot. _F----_. Joseph Favell, afterwards Captain, who had a commission from the Duke of York--as had Sam Le Grice--and was killed in the Peninsula, at Salamanca, 1812. Lamb states in the essay on "Poor Relations," where Favell figures as "W.," that he met his death at St. Sebastian. Both Sam Le Grice and Favell were to have accompanied Coleridge and Southey to the Susquehanna as Pantisocrats.

Page 26, line 1. _Fr----_. Frederick William Franklin, master of the Hertford branch of the school from 1801 to 1827. He died in 1836.

Page 26, line 2. _Marmaduke T----_. Marmaduke Thompson, to whom Lamb dedicated _Rosamund Gray_ in 1798.

Page 26, line 3. _Catalogue of Grecians_. Lamb was at Christ's Hospital from 1782 to 1789, and his list is not quite complete.

He himself never was a Grecian; that is to say, one of the picked scholars on the grammar side of the school, two of whom were sent up to Cambridge with a hospital exhibition every year, on the understanding that they should take orders. Lamb was one of the Deputy-Grecians from whom the Grecians were chosen, but his stammer standing in his way and a Church career being out of the question, he never became a full Grecian. Writing to George Dyer, who had been a Grecian, in 1831, Lamb says: "I don't know how it is, but I keep my rank in fancy still since school days. I can never forget I was a deputy Grecian!... Alas! what am I now? What is a Leadenhall clerk, or India pensioner, to a deputy Grecian? How art thou fallen, O Lucifer!"